


Come, Summer, Sinner

by lejf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dean makes out a little with some faceless nameless girls, Jealous Sam, M/M, Pining Sam, Unrequited Love?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9297092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/lejf
Summary: It’s summer. Dean lives. Sam burns.





	

Summer: the whole country swelters like there’s a body buried beneath and only now is it letting its soul go, seeping out from the cracks in the earth because that’s how Sam feels — body’s too small for what’s inside and come summertime it claws at the surface just begging to be free. Whole world’s boiling out there. Just let me see.

Come summer and they’re out in a balcony or a park or anywhere as long as it’s outside because god, haven’t you heard about those deaths where people leave young children in cars? Even better it’s the beach, and Dean says, “Sammy, what the hell, you bringin’ a book out here?” and Sam goes “Yeah, Dean, I am,” and puts on his patented bitchface and Dean just smiles a little strainedly and shrugs and says, “More for me, then,” while Sam sits under the tree-shade and reads only one page in three hours because Dean is out there in the surf and Sam can’t look away and when Dean turns, he sees, and he has the audacity to fucking wave because he knows Sam’s always got an eye on his back.

And maybe Sam is screwed up, took some path wrong in his head, (wrong road, turn back, except all the bridges are burnt, Sam, sorry, better luck next time) or maybe he’s been living blind his whole life because Dean is something out of a dream and Sam’s given up on telling himself that Dean shouldn’t be — because  _everybody_  watches Dean. Everywhere they go. Caught by Dean, starting from his eyes to his boots to his all-can-do attitude: the popular bitchy girls and the shy nerdy girls and the girls who say they want nothing to do with him and the girls who are much too old and even the boys who look away and blush and pretend they just want to be like Dean and the men that turn and watch under the half-shaded dark of a streetlight in the night when they think no one sees.

John sees them, though, and so does Sam, and between the two of them they’ve always got knives out and though they don’t talk about it, sometimes when they’re back from a hunt and the sun’s long gone and there are men outside lit up only by a smoke — Sam’s got a hand on the gun he never wants to use and he looks over and _sees,_ sees Dean, unbelievably gorgeous, and John, the presence of him flared wide like a cape over his sons’ shoulders, hand on his gun, every line of his body screaming to the world that he’d sooner die than let someone touch this beautiful, perfect boy.

But John’s got no quarrel with the girl in the bikini who’s splashing water at Dean now and Sam’s got nothing but a book he doesn’t want to read and sand in his hands. Come summer and Dean sheds his leather and his shirt and stands there in the waves with water clinging to his chest and a girl or two maybe, smiling at them both because all he’s looking for is a good time, a good life, everything simple. Come summer and Dean’s there with a girl he just met and his hand’s hidden under the water but Sam can see in the girl’s face exactly what Dean’s doing as if there’s no distance between them at all and as if there’s nobody else on this entire beach, when she suddenly seizes and holds onto his shoulders like the tide’s going to sweep her away and her mouth is all red and wide and Dean is smirking back.

Sam wishes–

Sam can go to Stanford as long as he tries, and he’s goddamn trying as hard as he can because most days he’s dizzy on either study or his brother’s existence, and he can read until he’s blind and memorise until his mind’s bursting and he can practise until his fingers bleed and Sam can go to one of the most prestigious schools in the _world_ while living in the backseat of a car with a gun in his hand and fraud under his belt — but no amount of trying can get Dean to love him.

So Sam doesn’t wish for anything. Sam never got by on wishing. He can't start now.

And the girl’s drifting away but her friends are coming along and everything they’re wearing is so skimpy that even Sam can see the edges of dusky pink. For a moment Dean looks over at him; of course he sees Sam staring — isn’t Dean used to it? Nobody doesn’t watch him — and he winks.

Sam can only swallow around something choked in his throat and pretend that his eyes burn because of the sand, and Dean is laughing and has an arm around the back of a girl to pull her close and kiss her all wet-like and Dean’s always said he loves summer. Tells it to Sam when he says it in the stories of girls’ curves, all that skin showing as the country heats up, the parties that run late and the way the car swelters so they have to leave all the windows open and it’s almost like they’re free with the wind belting so fast around them.

Dean is leaving the water now, returning to Sam like Sam’s some sort of homing beacon, always the little brother, nothing else. He’s grinning from ear to ear and glistening all over, the girl he’s got an arm around laughing too; she can’t keep her eyes or her hands off him because he’s a once-in-a-lifetime miracle and she fucking knows it, everyone does, even Dean.

“Sammy,” Dean is saying, “I’m gonna take off for a minute– hey, you okay?” and Sam rubs at his eyes furiously, so angry at himself for looking so miserable when Dean is only happy, worsens it because that just gets sand in his eyes and fuck he’s really ringing Dean’s baby brother alarms. Can tell because Dean’s sight narrows down to one of the only things that’s constant in the world to him and comes even closer but Sam is shaking his head and putting his hands up and saying, “No, no, no, Dean, it’s alright, just a bit of sand.”

“You sure?” Dean asks, and Sam goes “Yeah yeah, I am,” and he can tell Dean’s hesitating but then that girl presses to his side, her breasts all full and inviting and grazing his skin and Dean’s won over, tells Sam that he’ll be back soon and then the two of them are stumbling over their feet and leaving eagerly while she leads him by the hand.

All this noise and heat is swirling around him, and Sam throws his book down and tears towards the waterline. Must look a madman with a shirt still on and shorts that're going to get soaked and weigh him down, but he doesn’t care because his body’s bursting at the edges and he’s all coming apart and if he doesn’t have any weights he’ll just crumble and float away. Summer’s too hot, you see, all that hot air rises and it takes the unpleasant things like Sam away.

He crashes into the water in huge inelegant splashes and keeps wading in deeper until he’s not sure if he slips or his legs give out but either-or, doesn't matter, his head’s under as if he’d dived, mouth filling with water so salty it’s bitter but he opens his eyes to the stinging anyway. And the world is muted under the sea and for once everything is far enough that he can breathe.

A little bit of simple jealousy, that’s all it is. Growing inside him like the devil’s deed. He hadn’t bitten the forbidden fruit but it swells in him like a monster all on its own because he’d let himself think too much and look too much and make everything too much about Dean. Obeying his father, trying so hard at school, coming to the beach and going to Stanford. Dean, Dean, Dean. Living is all about Dean.

His lungs start to burn and he’s not sure why he stays just longer, lingers as if he’s kicking deeper, where he’ll go so far down into the inky black sea that he’ll come out the other side with his shit left behind, free. Don’t they say that water’s cleansing? They say water is purity and it washes sins away but suddenly all he sees is trash drifting by and mottled seaweed and murkiness, no visibility; the good world is where Dean is, the forbidden fruit, pleasure in indulgence; Sam’s flying too close to the sun, trying to burn away everything, and he realises in the last moment so he breaks to the surface, gasping, where apparently the lifeguard’s yelling and running and halfway to him but Dean is an even darker faster streak, an arrow that’s shoving through the crowd and slicing into the water.

“The fuck were you thinking, Sam?” Dean demands when he grabs him. The sick twisted part of Sam only wishes that Dean would grab harder, leave marks. “Shit, shit! Don’t you know how long you were under?! What the hell was that for?!”

“Nothing, Dean,” Sam says. “Just wanted to see why you enjoyed the water so much. _”_ Takes no genius to know that Dean doesn’t believe him, but the truth is Sam doesn't know either. He wasn't trying to die. He wasn't, no matter how it might look it. Dean stares so helplessly that it breaks Sam’s heart and all he can do is clutch onto Dean like he’s his fucking lifeline and start babbling, crazy, mind taken over by fever-heat, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, oh god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to ruin your good day like that. I’m so sorry.”

You shouldn’t have to live with me dragging you down behind you this, Sam wants to say. You shouldn’t have to live with a broken boy stumbling around after you with his heart forever ablaze, like a prisoner, weighed, by his ball and chain.

Dean soothes him with words and his hands, trying to put out a crumbling, charring wreckage; no dice, Dean. Sorry. “Don’t say that. Don’t say that, Sammy. You always come first, little brother, ain’t nothing in the world I’d put before you. Never for a _second_ do I regret that.”

The water is tepid under the summer heat; it can’t seem to cool the fire under his skin.

And around them time is picking up again, people going back to their business, girls tanning under the sun and boys showing their muscles and everybody is talking about summer love and flings and sex and their excuse to show off their bodies.

Come summer, and while everybody else is beautiful and brilliant but fleeting, Sam burns beneath the heat. He is a sacrifice, an effigy in a field all alone in the silent crackling worship of his pagan god whose gaze never falls to his one most devout.

Sam burns and burns like a wicker man.

**Author's Note:**

> It's summer for me. *dead* No temperature tolerance at all.
> 
> Wanted to do some present tense. Not sure if it's just the style or what, but I got seriously carried away when I wrote this and started slipping rhymes in everywhere. Written to Trois études de concert no.3 'Un Sospiro'. (I want to _romance_ Liszt's music. Haha get it??)
> 
> (Also wanted to get a maths “summer” joke in there but talk about ruinin’ the mood.)
> 
> Probably the only implication here is Dean's "More for me, then". Hmmm. Sorry. I just really love angsting Sam & unrequited teen years. The pain is so _good_.


End file.
